Jerusalem has been the capital city of the Jewish People for the last 3,000 years.  Still, Jerusalem opens its arms to a variety of cultures, and many Arabs and Christians call it home.

“I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling.  Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem.”  (Zechariah 12:2)

Last week, Israel announced the final approval of the Jerusalem municipality for a building project to add over 2,500 homes to Jerusalem’s Givat Hamatos neighborhood.  Although the plan was announced last week, it was put into play two years ago.

The United States, France and Germany criticized the move, seeing the neighborhood growth as endangering the two-state peace process and called for a reversal of the decision.

This sentiment, of course, aligns with a dramatic universal shift toward the insistence that Jerusalem be divided so that it becomes the capital of an Arab state and the capital of a Jewish state.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said of the mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood that its expansion would “poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians, but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations.”

She also said that it called “into question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”

“We condemn the Israeli authorities decision to build 2,610 homes in Givat Hamatos,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement.

“One cannot claim to support a solution and at the same time do things against without consequences being drawn, including at the European Union level,” Fabius threatened.  (JPost)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the condemnation, indicating that internationals had not learned the facts before responding.

“It’s worth learning the information properly before deciding to take a position like that,” he said.  The last phase of a building project is “a statutory formality that does not require publicizing.”

Although the Givat Hamatos expansion was widely publicized two years ago during its first phase, the recent approval was again widely publicized by incendiary anti-settlement group Peace Now—leading to the condemnations.

“If this decision is upheld, it would mark the creation of a new settlement in east Jerusalem for the first time in more than 15 years,” Fabius erroneously stated, disregarding the reality of the already existing, mixed-ethnicity neighborhood.

Arabs and Jews share the streets of Jerusalem.

Netanyahu reminded world leaders that “Arabs in Jerusalem purchase homes freely in the west of the city and nobody says that’s forbidden.  I don’t intend to tell Jews that they can’t buy homes in east Jerusalem,” he said.

Nevertheless, that is the very thing that the proposed two-state peace plan intends to accomplish, in addition to divvying up the rest of the Promised Land in a dangerous patchwork quilt of unworkable borders.

“The Obama plan would force Israel to give it all up, to divide Jerusalem, and return to indefensible borders.  This would be a grave error,” writes The Joshua Fund founder and author Joel C. Rosenberg.  “It would severely jeopardize Israeli national security.  It would do so in direct defiance of the Holy Scriptures.  And it would draw the judgment of the Lord Almighty against the United States and all other countries involved in the process.”

An Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem at the Western (Wailing) Wall Plaza.

As the world increasingly pressures Israel to return to the Israel-Jordan truce lines (aka the 1967 borders) even though Jordan itself has renounced all claim to them, it becomes increasingly clear that key end-time prophecies concerning Israel and Jerusalem are being fulfilled.

The prophet Joel, as one example, warns that God is not on board with plans to divide His land:

“I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.  There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land.”  (Joel 3:2)

However, Yeshua (Jesus) reassures us that Believers who live in these last days should not fear, but eagerly await His return.

“When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  (Luke 21:28)